STAMFORD -- Sam and Marsha Memoli sat at a picnic table in Cummings Park Wednesday evening and watched the sun set over the water, beyond the wooden skeleton of what used to be Cummings pier.

"We miss it," Marsha Memoli said about the pier. "We like to come down and watch the people fish. We like to make conversation and ask them what they're catching."

They used to walk out all the time to the pier, which was a 320-foot wooden walkway jetting into Westcott Cove and the city's only commercial pier until 50-mph winds from a tropical storm destroyed it in 2006. All that remains now are rotting wooden supports.

Sam Memoli said it's about time the city replaces the pier, one of many steps needed to fix up Cummings Park. "This place used to be Stamford's premier park," he said. "Then the focus shifted to Cove Island. Over the years it's just gotten more and more run down."

Since the pier was washed away by stormy waves four years ago, fishermen have been climbing out onto the rocky peninsula. A new pier will be much safer for the fishermen and any children who want to get closer to the water, Sam Memoli said.

"I think it will start bringing some people back to take walks," Marsha Memoli said. "We used to think it was romantic to take walks on the pier."

The pier, built in 1966, has been refurbished several times, but never entirely repaired, City Engineer Lou Casolo said. It essentially will be replaced, but the city's permit is for rehabilitation. That is important because permitting for new structures can take more than a year, and obtaining a rehabilitation permit took only 90 days, Casolo said.

Construction will begin in late October and should be finished by late March, Casolo said. The winning bidder was Terry Contracting and Materials of Riverhead, N.Y., which also was the engineering contractor for the Farms Road bridge replacement, completed last year, Casolo said.

The company will replace the pier at a cost of $797,000, which will be paid for with bonds, Casolo said.

"It's within our budget," he said. "We had budgeted around $850,000."

Casolo said he has been requesting money for the project every year since 2006, and estimates have ranged from $100,000 to $900,000.

"Any large capital project generally is funded over multiple years," Casolo said. "Those funds were approved in a time line that was parallel to the track of completion of the final bid documents so that I would have the money when the bids came in."

The new pier will be slightly wider and longer than the old one, Casolo said. The first section will be 313 feet long and the second section, which will stretch out over deeper water, will be 127 feet long.

The new pier will fulfill half the wishes residents aired at a public information meeting last year, Casolo said. Residents asked for a bigger pier with better lighting, a gazebo and fish cleaning stations. City engineers drew plans for a pier that will be about 2 feet wider with cut-off lighting, which shines downward, Casolo said.

"It minimizes the glare when looking at it from a distance," he said. "Some people were worried about it looking like a runway."

City engineers concluded they could not include fish cleaning stations or a gazebo, Casolo said. The Department of Environmental Protection would not permit a gazebo "because the pier is really to provide access to the waterfront and a gazebo isn't a structure for waterfront use," he said.

Natalia Popescu, 62, and Raisa Kruglov, 61, who sat together on a bench at Cummings Park Wednesday evening, were happy to hear a new pier is coming.

"They should build another one. It's time," Popescu said. "The park seems like an abandoned place now."